Disney: Going Home (Mick in 1993)

[michelej1]

Calgary Herald, July 18, 1993

HEADLINE: MAGIC OF FLEETWOOD MAC TO GRACE DISNEY CHANNEL

BYLINE: BOB BLAKEY

BODY:
LOS ANGELES

There was a time when a business deal would have seemed unthinkable between the hard-drinking, fast-living blues band Fleetwood Mac and the Walt Disney Co.

But that 1960s blues band went through a lot of upheavals, including numerous membership changes and self-imposed sobriety and Disney has discovered the mass appeal of rock-concert specials on its American cable channel.

Result: an upcoming Fleetwood Mac documentary and performance special on the Disney Channel, part of the "Going Home" series that so far has always made it to Canadian audiences on the Toronto-based Family Channel.

Fleetwood Mac's music has touched just about everybody under the age of 50. If those early records, rich with the guitar magic of Peter Green, didn't win you over, chances are the astonishingly successful 1976-77 Mac lineup with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham is a milestone in the music of your life.

The "Rumours" album of 1977 remains one of rock's best sellers. Still led by Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, with newer members, Mac soldiers on, currently sounding closer to its blues origins than ever.

Mick Fleetwood met with TV critics here to discuss the Disney Channel special. He's one of rock's most articulate spokesman. And thanks to an engaging, well-written (with help) autobiography a few years ago, he became a valued historian of his era.

In an interview after the session, I asked him if there's ever been any serious attempt to reunite the mid-1970s band, even temporarily.

"No, but we were approached in no uncertain terms to put (together) the Rumours incarnation of Fleetwood Mac for that long-distance, last tour and everything, but it never transpired.

"Lindsey's going off doing what he's doing.

"To be quite candid, we were offered an absolute fortune to do it. It had, certainly, it's up side. But no, it's very unlikely."

The tall (about six-foot-six) drummer made his book as much an account of British and American pop music as a life story. It described with remarkable candor Mac's good and bad moments and the band's highly publicized turmoil.

It also showed some of rock music's darker sides, such as the fate of Peter Green -- "the Green god," as Fleetwood called his idol -- and that of another early Mac guitarist, Danny Kirwan.

Fleetwood says both are sad tales.

Green lives in London as a semi-recluse. People have seen his fingernails grown to grotesque lengths. When he left the band, he renounced fame and wealth, tried to give his money away and stopped playing the guitar.

Since the book came out, "I spoke to Peter," says Fleetwood.

"He's not, I suppose, in the mainstream of what people construe as living a normal life, but . . . he's very cognizant of what's going on but he's also aware of his illness. He has sort of controlled schizophrenia, but he's still that person -- there are elements of that person I knew very well."

Fleetwood hasn't seen Kirwan for many years, however.

"Danny is, I'm afraid, an absolutely horrible story. He seemingly inherited his father's traits."

Kirwan's father "died a raging alcoholic on the streets," and the ex-musician lives in a Salvation Army hostel, drinking regularly at a nearby pub.

Fleetwood said he was talked out of paying his old friend a visit, by someone who knows him now.

"He said, don't do it. The trauma, for Danny, would just . . . He said, 'He talks kindly about you and about the band, but he's very sick.' "

News like that is one more obstacle for one of Fleetwood's biggest goals:

"I've always wanted to put on the show of shows -- to have an incredible concert with all the members of Fleetwood Mac that ever played. My dream is to do that one day."

And the odds?

"Logistically, quite frankly, it's a nightmare. So it's sort of wishful thinking. But stranger things have happened."

[michelej1]

Chicago Tribune, September 3, 1993

HEADLINE: Mick Fleetwood has the blues again - and is happy about it

BYLINE: Chris Heim

BODY:
Most people know Fleetwood Mac as the California-based pop band famous for such sunny '70s ditties as "Say You Love Me," "Go Your Own Way" and the recently resurrected "Don't Stop." But that edition of the band, in which Americans Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks played a prominent role, was only one of many incarnations of Mac. And some would say, not even the finest. For that, the argument continues, you would have to go back to the earliest days of the group, when founders Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, fresh out of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers put together the band that would bear their combined monikers and, for a brief period of time, become one of the more popular and accomplished units in the '60s British blues rock explosion.

Now, 26 years almost to the month after Mac made its debut, Mick Fleetwood is coming to Chicago to play with a new blues rock group called Blue Whale. (They appear Friday at the Cubby Bear.) His partner in crime this time is guitarist Ron Thompson. Thompson first began playing around the time that first edition of Mac formed. He was in John Lee Hooker's band for four years and led a blues rock band called the Resistors,

"Ron Thompson is someone I met 12 years ago," Mick Fleetwood said, speaking by phone from the West Coast. "I played with him on and off for many years and he'd become a very close friend. I was a huge fan of his. I had from time to time gone on record as saying I'd love to put something together with him and either through Fleetwood Mac doing stuff. . . . A year and a half ago, to make a long story short, I quit my evil ways. Sex and drugs and rock and roll and all that. And I've done what I intended to do a long time ago, which is put a band together with Ron."

Blue Whale (with bassist Bill Campbell and percussionist Oliver Brown), Fleetwood said, is a serious, ongoing project. The group has gone out on extended weekend dates and is in the studio cutting an album. And the sound, he said, will remind many of those early days of Fleetwood Mac.

"The great thing is there's a real resurgence (of interest in blues). It's very apparent. These boxed sets of Robert Johnson and people like that. There are a lot of people buying these things and really getting into where rock music really all comes from. And being a part of that (is very satisfying). Knowing that's how I started, primarily, outside of playing the Ventures and stuff like that. My first real gut-felt musical experiences were all in that genre. John Lee Hooker, early Bo Diddley, stuff like that."

The early edition of Fleetwood Mac even got the chance to work with some of its blues heroes, recording at Chess Studios in 1969 with Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, Shakey Horton, Honeyboy Edwards and others for the double album, "Fleetwood Mac in Chicago."

"When we first went there, we were literally 18-year-old little white boys from London sitting with the likes of our true, true heroes. The up side, which I'm able to say with an element of glee, is that we held our own, looking back on that album."

Long out of print, "Fleetwood Mac in Chicago" is about to resurface. "I remastered the album," Fleetwood related. "It sounds fantastic.

"And I've found more tracks, which we're putting out. It's coming out on Sire Records, certainly sometime in the next three months."

That project is one of many for Fleetwood of late. He has plans to open two music clubs and was the executive producer/host for "Fleetwood Mac: Going Home." (The 90-minute documentary premiered last Sunday on the Disney Channel and is rebroadcast Saturday at 10 p.m. and three other times this month). This new found energy and activity Fleetwood attributes to a major life change he made some 18 months ago.

"I was a drunk," he said bluntly. "A well disguised one, but needless to say, an alcoholic. My life was ruled by how bad I felt. And now that doesn't exist. If anything, I have to rein myself in and stop myself from doing too much. Now that I'm clean and sober, I'm actually getting around to doing some of this stuff. It's a whole new world out there. It's where the talking stops. When you get wasted, you have lots of good ideas, but you never actually or very rarely accomplish any of them. So I've had a dossier of information haunting me."

That dossier, he continued, includes yet another edition of Fleetwood Mac. With Billy Burnette going back to country music and Stevie Nicks opting out for a solo career, the band was down to Fleetwood, John and Christine McVie. And though Fleetwood said "we're mostly trying to keep it quiet until we (officially) announce it," he did finally confirm recent rumors that Dave Mason and Bekka Bramlett (daughter of '70s blues rock favorites, Delaney and Bonnie) are the new recruits. The band begins rehearsals this month, with plans to record a new album and a possible late summer tour to follow.

"It's a whole new chapter of Fleetwood Mac," he said. "We're going to have to get out and work and really show people what the band is about. Not to be presumptuous, we have (resurrected the band with new members more than once). The lovely thing is, I've been traveling around with Blue Whale and it's really fantastic the number of people who walk up and think we've broken up and are always so happy to know Fleetwood Mac is not gone. I say, well, we're actually getting back together and we've made some changes. And you don't get the feeling people think it's over, even when obviously as powerful an entity as Stevie (Nicks) leaves. So, if we come up with really good music, and I'm fairly confident we will, it just remains to be seen if people will accept it. To that extent the jury's out, but we're definitely going to make that attempt."

[priestofnothing]

From The Disney Channel Magazine August/Sept 1993

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by priestofnothing

From The Disney Channel Magazine August/Sept 1993

That's really nice. Thanks for posting these pages. Michele

[iamnotafraid]

I saw the show in March of '96 and thought it was pretty good.

Thanks for posting the magazine article, hadn't seen that before.

Stevie Nicks raspberries???

[Villavic]

Is there any portion of this in Youtube??